Eric McLean today was awarded custody of his two sons after a deal was signed between McLean and ex-wife Erin McLean that awards him primary custody and requires her to pay child support for boys, ages 9 and 12.

Eric McLean today was awarded custody of his two sons.

After months of bitter legal wrangling, Eric McLean and ex-wife Erin McLean stuck a deal that awards him primary custody and requires her to pay child support for boys, ages 9 and 12.

Erin McLean was jailed last year after she was convicted of contempt in the custody battle. She was released from jail in December after the state Court of Appeals issued an order setting a $5,000 bond while she appeals the contempt of court conviction that landed her behind bars.

Eric McLean was convicted last year of reckless homicide in the 2007 shooting death of Erin McLean’s teenage lover Sean Powell.

Erin McLean flaunted an affair with Powell, whom she met as a student teacher in his high school English class, in front of her husband for months before he pointed a high-powered rifle at the unarmed teenager in front of the couple’s Coker Avenue home in March 2007.

In September, Eric McLean was convicted of reckless homicide and was ordered to serve a total of 90 days in jail.

Because of work performed behind bars, he won credits that allowed him to be released after serving only 71 days.

Erin McLean ended up in jail as part of the ongoing legal battle over custody of the couple’s two sons. She has been accused of keeping the boys away from Eric McLean for months despite a court order granting him co-parenting rights and then using a cellular phone she gave the boys to secretly communicate with them after they were found in Austin, Texas, and returned to Knoxville on Oct. 1.

Swann ordered Erin McLean jailed for 95 days, mainly for defying a February order that gave her ex-husband equal parenting time with the two sons.

According to testimony and evidence at the hearing, Erin McLean fled Tennessee with the children and a man she met at a psychiatric hospital in Nashville in September 2007, lived in two different locations in Austin, moved to Colorado, took a two-week trip to San Francisco and then moved back to Austin.

Slaybaugh appealed Erin McLean’s contempt of court conviction on a number of grounds and in a related pleading asked the appellate court to set a bond under which she could be released during the appeal.

The appellate court said that Slaybaugh’s request for bond was not properly filed but granting the request in order to “(treat) substance over form to secure the just speedy and inexpensive determination of this proceeding on its merits.”